Nick Knight on SHOWstudio, Fashion Film, and the Metaverse | MVFW 2022 Panel Series

Nick Knight, image maker and founder of SHOWstudio, sits down with David Cash for the second talk of Metaverse Fashion Week 2022, recorded in Decentraland in March 2022. Knight explains why he started SHOWstudio, why every garment deserves to be seen in movement, how he made the Maison Margiela film with John Galliano, and why he sees the metaverse as a natural extension of two decades of work. He also makes a case for artists to engage with AI.

Watch on YouTube

Chapters

1. 00:00 Welcome and introduction to Nick Knight
2. 01:53 From photographer to image maker
3. 04:13 Why SHOWstudio started: performance and access
4. 06:57 Clothes in movement and the rise of fashion film
5. 08:17 From VHS cassettes to the internet
6. 12:32 Remote shoots and a global internet
7. 17:08 Enthusiasm, trust, and long collaborations
8. 21:14 Immediacy and a future-based art form
9. 25:12 Making the Maison Margiela film with John Galliano
10. 32:09 The metaverse as an extension of his work
11. 38:13 AI, artists, and shaping the future
12. 45:06 Accessibility, community, and closing

Speakers

• Nick Knight, Fashion film pioneer, photographer, and founder of SHOWstudio
• David Cash, curator of MVFW (host)

Key topics

• Why Nick Knight calls himself an image maker
• Founding SHOWstudio to promote fashion film and live broadcasting
• Why clothes are designed to be seen in movement
• 3D scanning, remote shoots, and the internet as a global stage
• Trust and long working relationships with designers
• The Maison Margiela film, cameras across the atelier, and luminance invert
• Why artists should help shape AI and the metaverse
• Access, community, and the SHOWstudio fashion film festival at the Cash Labs Gallery

In their words

"every dress is designed to be seen in movement" (Nick Knight)

"So it's a future-based art form" (Nick Knight)

How to cite

APA: Cash, D. (2022). Nick Knight on SHOWstudio, Fashion Film, and the Metaverse | MVFW 2022 Panel Series [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/SdpbLX8U4yU

Chicago: Cash, David. "Nick Knight on SHOWstudio, Fashion Film, and the Metaverse | MVFW 2022 Panel Series." Recorded March 2022. YouTube video, 50:10. https://youtu.be/SdpbLX8U4yU.

Recording details

Recorded: March 2022

Format: Panel and talk series recorded in Decentraland for Metaverse Fashion Week 2022

Length: 50:10 · Language: English

Curated and hosted by David Cash, produced by Cash Labs

About the series

The MVFW 2022 Panel Series is a set of ten conversations recorded for the first Metaverse Fashion Week, held in Decentraland in March 2022. David Cash curated and hosted the series, produced by his studio, Cash Labs. Designers, artists, technologists, editors, and founders joined him on the main stage to talk about digital fashion, identity, commerce, and craft. The full series is archived on David Cash's YouTube channel.

About this record

Presented with framing, speaker name tags, and captions added in 2026. Captions were machine-transcribed and reviewed by hand, with names checked against speaker introductions. Speaker roles are as of the recording date and may have changed since.

Shared for educational, research, and archival purposes. For corrections, name spellings, or removal requests: david@cashlabs.io

Transcript

Machine-transcribed and reviewed. Timestamps link to the moment in the video.

[0:09] Hi everybody, welcome back to the main stage of Decentraland's Metaverse Fashion Week. We are here back again, day one, panel two. We hope you've enjoyed your first day of Fashion Week. We know that we have. My name is David Cash, I'm the curator from the Decentraland Foundation for today's event and I am joined today with one of the people that I'm personally most excited to speak with over the course of this week. Fashion hero, you could say, Nick Knight. Nick is somebody that I've personally looked up to for quite a while and is a pillar in the fashion industry, one of the people who originally, in my opinion, digitized fashion and really paved the way in terms of what can be considered fashion film, fashion photography and beyond. And when we're entering the metaverse and considering all various ways in which fashion can be perceived and experienced, I felt it imperative to have at least one conversation

[0:59] with Nick Knight and discuss some of the background and some of the eccentricities of how fashion can be brought into different contexts, video, photo, VR, AR and beyond and especially as we're entering the metaverse this week and exploring all these different mediums. I thought it wise to go into the background and contextualize all of this a little bit for everybody. So, with all of that being said, I would love to let the man himself introduce himself a little bit and let you all know in case anybody is unaware a little bit about what Nick does and what he's currently working on with SHOWstudio and yeah, hopefully you can all get some context of the gravitas of this conversation and why this is also important. So, with all of that being said, if you don't mind, I'd love to pass it over to you, Nick, and let you introduce yourself and tell people a little bit about SHOWstudio and all the

[1:41] brilliant work that you do. Excellent. Well, thank you very much David and hello everybody. I'm not sure I could match that introduction. It was so glowing. Anything I would say is going to seem a little bit less exciting. My name is Nick Knight. I was a photographer. I am now what I would call an image maker and I can happily go into that, perhaps later in the conversation, while the difference is in the name. In the year 2000, I started an online platform called SHOWstudio. With its main aim was to sort of bring fashion into a different era to promote fashion film and to promote live broadcasting and to start to look at fashion, perhaps in a way that hadn't really been conceived or looked at before. I was 20-odd years ago and now I feel I'm just scratching the surface still, feel I've just started.

[2:29] There's so much to do. It's a bit like opening a Pandora's box. You see one thing, but that leads to another and it gets more and more exciting. I've previously experimented and worked with 3D scanning as a sort of way of getting a digital image of people. If I swivel the camera around gently, I can probably show you right in the back there some early prototypes of Lady Gaga, Daphne Guinness and lots of other exciting people. My office looks like something out of that scene in Blade Rum where we're all adults and it's a little strange, but we 3D scan people as a sort of almost a matter of course naturally when people come and say hello, so just taking a picture, we do a quick 3D scan of their head. But David, ask me a question and I can stop a monologue and perhaps a pretty good one. No, I appreciate all that and I'm sure people do as well for context.

[3:22] Just to start us off, when we consider fashion and capturing fashion imagery, and I love the fact that you said you're a fashion image maker because I feel like that encapsulates it really well and hopefully we can go into that in a little bit more detail. It goes beyond capturing a photo or a video, especially today. We have a whole range of different means of which we can capture fashion, but originally obviously this stems from photography and video. I think you can look back obviously to fashion photography, but more so when we're considering this conversation, I think it's more fashion TV and Jean-Paul Gaultier getting major exposure on television. I think I was going to say earlier, I think the only other person who's maybe captured fashion in nearly as many ways as he was maybe Louis Grigant or somebody. Some of the people who really focus on capturing and being there in the moment.

[4:04] I think that's where you came into the space, but then you kind of took it to a new level because you're like, okay, so these garments are just being videoed going down the runway. What else can we do? Do you want to maybe bring us down some of your thought process of why you started Show Studio and why you wanted to start going beyond just the runway videos of the fashion films? Yeah, well certainly it came about really, I guess if I take it right back, to the middle of the 80s actually. I've been working in fashion and I work, it's a large, you can see some of the work behind me. I work in a white space. I work in a cove or a cyclorama or whatever the appropriate term for it is. So I work in this kind of strange white space and I thought it was interesting. I thought it was interesting that the performative aspect of it, how people move and perform. I think it's interesting in terms of the emotional aspect of it where you're in this space but

[4:53] you can't rehearse it. So it's incredibly pressured. You can stand in front of the most famous person in the world and you're basically you're starting at zero. You could never rehearse that picture and you never should incidentally. It's a very interesting, pressurized space which I thought was fascinating. And I started to think, okay well here I am photographing a young Naomi Campbell dressed in the Japanese Yojimoto. She looks amazing. I look around me. There are five other people in the room and I'm thinking this is such a shame. Naomi put on a tape from her friend Prince, nobody ever heard of her, put it on a tape player because that player, I started moving in this beautiful scarlet red coat to the sounds of Prince. I'm thinking this is just a performance that everybody should see. This is so incredible and there's five people in the room.

[5:46] So it occurred to me that if I could in some way capture that, some way record it and put it out, then people would be able to see how amazing fashion actually is. So I think people on the whole don't understand fashion, they don't understand its importance in terms of where it fits into society and incidentally every society that's ever been. But they also don't understand the high level of dedication, devotion that certain people do have in fashion. When you're talking about Alexander McQueen or John Galliano, these people are, they're the Mozart's, they're the kind of Debusses. They are great artists of our time and we're going to have to look at the sort of cues that went round a block at the Met in New York when Savage Beauty opened the McQueen exhibition. Same thing in London, they were keeping the museums open until midnight so people could see.

[6:34] So people love this stuff. They weren't getting access to it. The fashion world was weirdly closed. So I thought this is crazy, this is amazing stuff, we've got to get it out there. So the performance aspect and the sort of access to this was a large reason I started the SHOWstudio. But there was also another reason which is I was taking photographs and that's what I used to do. I was thinking, well, every dress is designed to be seen in movement, every piece of clothing is always to be seen in movement and I'm moving them, but you're only seeing one single frame. So that sort of odd to me, that feels like this isn't the best version of the designer's original vision. So we can show these dresses in movement. That's great. So in walks fashion film is a kind of answer to that. And, you know, again, a large reason to start the SHOWstudio was that. Also, I was very like a lot of people super excited by new technologies.

[7:29] You know, my thing has always been to see things I haven't seen before and see the world in a way that I haven't seen it before or hasn't been seen before. So I was really interested and still am in exploring our parameters. You know, we live in a world in which you accept like this. But actually, there's very there are lots of different worlds going on around us, which we're really not engaging with, which we don't understand, we don't see. So there was sort of excitement of new new technologies that enables to see things in the right way. And that goes right back to the sort of early night or mid-1980s. So really almost as my sort of starting to discover fashion, I was starting to try and change it. Anyway, technology wasn't quite there. Mid-80s, late 80s, there was not very much you could do. Come the early 90s, I thought, I know what I'll do.

[8:20] I'll do a VHS cassette instead of a magazine. I'll send out VHS cassettes and send it to all the people I kind of really admire, really love. That didn't quite happen, just for reasons. And then come mid-90s, the internet appears. And immediately it was sort of clear to me, hold on a minute, here's a global communication platform. What can we do with this? I just got very excited and a friend of mine, the designer Peter Zabel, said to me he'd been contacted by a company in California who wanted him and I to work on an art program for the website in California. I said to him, sorry, why are we doing it? Some people can do it for ourselves. And consequently, two years later, three years later, SHOWstudio was founded. Peter went off and did his thing. But I kept on with SHOWstudio and really wanted to try and push it as far as I possibly could in terms of the possibilities that it allowed.

[9:18] Brilliant, brilliant. So many things I could touch on there, but one thing I'd like to piggyback off of is this idea you brought up of the immediacy of fashion. And some people call it performativity or liminality. But for me, it's really, it's theater. And for me also, it's very authentic and it's very genuine. Because as you said, it's these moments of people experiencing clothing that other people just wouldn't get a chance to experience and what goes along with that. Being in some creation, being in some art piece that somebody spent thousands of hours building and then seeing that come to life, like in a moment with music or with some incredible person, as you've said. So I really love that element. I come from a theater background originally as a child actor. And I feel like that's one of the things that dictates my interest in the now and the current and the what's happening. And I think when you bring things into the context

[10:07] that we're looking at today, I think it's really necessary to consider why we've taken this leap. So like any time I'm kind of considering fashion or art, I like to look at what we're experiencing today, take a good step back, figure out how it existed and then based on all of that, figure out where it's going. So, you know, with that being said, when we consider the performativity or the theatricality of a runway, you definitely go far beyond that. And especially considering some of the work you've been creating over the past few years, obviously, you know, with limitations imposed, either COVID or, you know, having to shoot overseas. I think you've done a great job of still keeping that ethos and bringing that life and passion of fashion and keeping it with us even in these alternative formats. So I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on what that spark is and how you find capturing it and how you can do so across mediums.

[11:01] Maybe that's a lofty question that I feel like you're the person to answer. It's a lot of questions. I'll try and answer it in segments. I mean, first of all, yeah, we live in a time now which, you know, when I was growing up was pure science fiction. You know, now I can work with a team in California. They can put a camera in the studio for me and I can press a zero key on my keyboard and take a picture. And I can see what's going on in front through that camera's lens. And a person sitting in front of that camera can see me via an interface like this. So now you're starting to work in a really kind of different way. I remember it came... See, every generation needs to feel that in some way they can latch into fashion and it's aspirational.

[11:51] And I was looking for that vision of something that I felt, you know, would be aspirational for people, that they'd look at me, yeah, I wish I was doing that. I wish I was that person. And the kind of slightly tired vision of the sort of magazine and fashion photographer wasn't really appealing and I didn't think it was particularly... You know, it's been going on for hundreds of years. It's been going on for the last, let's say, 100 years. Avadine, yeah. Well, maybe for that, you know, you've got 1919, 1913, you've got Baron Adolf Demetroin who's come in and asked and then she's like... And that's the sort of, you know, the beginnings of fashion photography. So just, you know, this is a medium which is about change and here we are repeating history, you know, without ever breaking from it. We need to do something different. I remember one morning I had to do a... I had to get up at five in the morning

[12:37] to join my friend Kanye on a shoot for him for Gap Live across Zoom. And literally at five in the morning I was taking pictures by pressing the zero on my keyboard, you know. And then that call gave way and I had to do a press conference on an exhibition. I had like 50 journalists all on Zoom and then I had to go and do a shoot for Fendi in the afternoon all on Zoom. So it was like, wait a minute, this is a different vision of a photographer and, you know, the sort of man who fell to earth, the David Bowie role in Man Who Fell To Earth kind of came to mind as a kind of, well, this is a bit what my life is like now. Here I am and I have all these different screens all over me and it kind of looks great actually. I'm sadly, I don't look great like David Bowie look great but the tech stuff looks great.

[13:25] And it just reminded me of that and I thought, well, that actually feels like a more modern way of understanding our interrelationship and the globality of fashion and, you know, how we work. And, you know, the thing I've always loved about the internet, it's such a non-nationalistic thing. And I promised you I wouldn't touch on politics before this, but, you know, it does feel like a lot of our problems are from the sort of, you know, the boundaries of the setup from the old world and actually getting into the internet feels so much more liberating that, you know, I remember early broadcast on SHOWstudio and we'd see people popping up, you know, as they joined the broadcast because it was open to everybody. You know, you'd see kind of, you know, Australia and Japan coming online and then India and then Europe and Africa and then it would go through to, you know, America. And, you know, it's just this amazing feeling.

[14:14] Actually, it's the world, you know, we're dealing with the world here. And that has always felt to me like sort of, you know, it's such an exciting thing to be doing. So I've done a best answer to the part of your question, any of your question of this more you want me to answer. That was kind of, you know, the sort of the early idea that, you know, this when you go into a studio and you see these amazing things happening, you know, to allow people to interact with that, to somehow be part of that, has always been something like that fascinating and fashion is, is, you know, is full of amazing people. As I said, it's sort of in some ways gets bad press. People think it's trivial or or skin deep or about vanity, especially if you deal with the kind of, you know, a media in the west, which is a largely sort of Protestant based media.

[15:07] You know, you can deal with sort of North America and England in sort of Protestant thought. You know, the idea of dressing is almost a sin, you know, vanity is not well for you. Athletics are better at the Protestants, not so good. So, yeah, there's been sort of a sort of almost a sort of ignoring of it or playing it down. And I always thought, well, you know, I'm working people, you know, like Yojim Moto or McQueen or John Galliani, these people who really are touching on visions, which are quite different in the world I'm seeing around me. Anyway, I feel like I'm probably going off of tangent, so help me. No, no, no, this is all perfect. I think one thing that you're touching on, which I'd love to expand on even a little bit more, is this idea of immediacy and how it's captured.

[15:56] And you touched on Steichen and, you know, this idea of capturing motion in stills. And then you fast forward that to trying to capture a moment live because it's the only time you're ever going to see it. Even like you mentioned with your work with Kanye, I mean, if he does something once, if you don't capture it on film, it's gone, it's that moment in time that you have to try to be there for. And now with, you know, all of these technologies that we're exploring here in the metaverse, you know, I've been on calls here and somebody's wearing something that's virtually, you know, either earrings or a hat or a dress, and it's instantaneous, it's in the moment. They can change that thing in a second and if I didn't see them in that one way, in that one moment, it changes, same with the metaverse, you know. Somebody will run up to me in an outfit, I'll say hi to them, they'll run away, they'll change, they'll come back,

[16:35] and it's instantaneous, it's new. And I think as we're, and you mentioned the end of your statement there actually was perfect because you're considering how you translate these kinds of moments from major, major voices like somebody like, you know, Yoji or John Galliano and the thoughts that are coming through their mind and their process and what they're working on. When you're working with these artists, you know, as you said, you're a technologist as well on top of everything. You're an image maker and you're a technologist. You're somebody who tries to have at least one finger on the pulse of what's happening right now. So I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on how you maybe convince some of these legendary designers and brands and individuals to embrace new technologies because I definitely see you as one of the first people. You know, as you said, when somebody comes into your studio,

[17:20] you 3D scan them. And, you know, I know you've done work with Bjork and other artists, you know, VR, AR, going beyond. I'm curious if you have any thoughts on how you bring these thoughts up or why you maybe use a certain technology over another when you're kind of approaching these new instances. Yeah, I think really it's just it's simple than you might expect. It's just enthusiasm. You know, there's a new way of seeing things. There's a new way of doing things. There's a new program I can use. It shows me things I haven't previously seen. And so when I first discovered 3D scanning, which was back in 1999, I think, it just showed me that you would form in a new way. So I was super excited about that. That excitement, you know, is then very contagious. You know, and I think we would do that some of our early live streams.

[18:11] When I remember you could stream one single still image every minute. Still felt very real. But so that was that was in 2003. That's the all the internet could probably cope with. You know, the designers, the people I work with, whether it's John Galliano, McQueen, whoever, you know, they're super excited because I'm super excited. So you kind of get this sort of, you know, a sort of contagious excitement for just discovery. And a lot of the people that I'm working with, you know, are really very open minded. I mean, it wouldn't be where they were if they weren't. So they're not stuck in their vision. Sometimes they need a little bit of help. And this, you know, there's a certain amount of kind of, you know, technology scares some people because they just don't know it. So they feel frightened of it or they feel worried about it.

[19:00] So they don't want to embrace it. So you have to sort of, you know, show it's not that scary. So it's, you know, it's a kind of, you know, just a way of sort of, you know, just communicating. And also the way I work with people is to try and understand what they want to try and understand what they're trying to get through. So I immerse myself in their world, which is why, A, I don't work with that many people. And B, I just tend to work with the same people again and again and again. You know, I started working with John Galliano back in 1986. I've worked with Kanye for over 10 years now. I've worked with Gaga for, you know, probably longer, probably 12, 13 or 14 years. So, you know, we've, well, not that long. No, actually not that long. But anyway, but yeah, that's because when you find somebody, you know, it's a relationship. And, you know, my life isn't, you know, I don't want to be throwing relationships away.

[19:51] You know, if you've got great people to work with, then you really stay with them because they do understand, you know, that, you know, I'm there trying to work with them, for them, to understand them, also to try and get their vision out in a way that perhaps they haven't. And that's a lot of trust. That's a lot of trust for that, you know, yeah. Built up through years of working together. But it is, you know, it is a way of trying to, you know, maintain relationships which are important to you. Life's unfortunately very short. I wish it was longer and maybe it will be. But at the moment, it's kind of sort of cut off time. I'm 63, you know. I mean, maybe, you know, I get to 85 or something like that. That'd be great. But, you know, I have a finite time now. So I'm sort of really sort of, you know, very excited to push as much as I can.

[20:40] And it gives you a certain impetus to get things done. I mean, that's my only problem in life, that bloody thing's so short. You know, you're just starting, you're getting started and it's not shuffling you off. But I'm not being shuffled off just yet. And also, I'm still hoping that we can live a lot longer than we present to you. Absolutely. We're futurists here. We're futurists here. We're on the same page. Yeah, no, absolutely. I'm hoping a good 150-year kind of. That feels a bit more comfortable for me. But I think we're probably straight off. I think this is great. You want to... Immediately is a word you used in your question. And I do think that's really important. Because when you're taking an image, when you're creating an image, somebody taking photographs, somebody, when you're in front of them, as I said, you can't rehearse that. So it's what happens in that moment.

[21:27] It can't be repeated and it can't be rehearsed. So there's a certain amount of... There's a lot of focus of energy on one particular time. And you won't ever really get that again. So the immediacy that, you know, for me is the most important thing. One of the things that always happens when you go into taking a picture of somebody is the first picture that comes out is almost always rubbish. So you're almost straight away looking at failure as a thing. And you have to deal with that. And that's quite good as a cleansing mechanism to stop you repeating yourself. You know, to actually sort of say, okay, you know, what on earth am I going to do? And you go into that place within yourself, which is not to do with your sight. So it's not what you see. It's not even what you feel, it's what you desire. So you're working in a sort of emotional state which actually is slightly based in the future.

[22:19] So you never really see the image you're going to take. You know, you feel it, you desire it, you want it. So it's a future-based art form, you know, which is quite fascinating to find. You know, when the camera sort of goes down, you don't see it, when it flashes up, you don't see it, et cetera, et cetera. And also our eyes work so differently from how an image works. You know, so there's a real sort of interesting psychology about the moment which you take an image, you know, because it's something you're wanting. And then, but it's part of performance, it's part of something, and all of that, you know, really sort of resonated me, and I loved that, I loved that, but I felt nobody understands it like that. Nobody really sees that. So if I can open this up and show people and allow people in, you know, I do a lot of my shoots and as many as I possibly can on a live broadcast, so I will sort of just, you know,

[23:09] tell people I'm gonna do a shoot. We have three or four cameras now, all broadcasting out there, and they can see exactly what happens. They can see, you know, the model is in hair and makeup for four hours before you get there. That's super different from what other people are doing, though, because I feel like one thing I wanted to bring up, and sorry to interrupt, I just think it's perfect, is this idea, when we're thinking of this idea of immediacy, there's also this idea of control, because you, you know, you've had a lot of titles and you have a lot of titles, you know, photographer, director, editor, you know, creative director, whatever the case might be, but essentially you are either directing or editing what the viewer sees. So I think there, I think that it's definitely necessary to mention the idea of immediacy and performativity in the now, but also I feel like it's, I don't wanna under,

[23:50] you know, underplay your role in the process that, you know, you can pick all of these inputs or outputs, but at the end of the day, you choose which ones people are going to see and where and how, and I think that's really important. So the fact that they can see a behind the scenes live stream of the shoot actually adds gravitas to the shoot itself, because people can go and see part of the process, it adds provenance, it adds context, and that's actually the perfect segue because as you know, one of the things I wanted to talk about in today's conversation before we delve too hard into the metaverse is SWOC and some of the work you've been doing with Margiel in the recent years, you know, and when I saw the first one in 2020, I was really blown away by how you integrated what we were just talking about, the process with the final outcome, and I think that that's something that not a lot of people are doing, and you did so

[24:34] in a very editorialized way. And I think that also opened a lot of people's minds as to being open to showing some of the process, because I know we've seen it in a very like, you know, the original Margiela, you see the kind of behind the scenes videos taken on a terrible camera, and it's like, oh, what even is this? But there is, that is part of the ethos of the brand, and some of these legacy brands, it was, you know, a handheld camera recorder or something, you know, finding behind the scenes, so how do we take that ethos and bring that into today? So I would love to hear some of your thoughts on, you know, the choice and the power of choosing what the viewer sees and why that's so important, especially when dealing with a brand that big and a process that massive, which you undertook. You mentioned what we were talking a little bit earlier about trust, and working with John Galliano at the Maison Margiela, you know, you need his trust.

[25:22] And John's actually quite a private man, and to get him to sort of enter into this idea that actually the process is part of it, you know, it's very open source, it's very kind of, you don't want it, you don't want to hide anything, because that's a great thing, you know, and that's always what I believe, you know, from the moment that you have a little something in your mind, it clicks, and you start to work through to get that right through the shoot, through the posts, through everything else, you know, and it's the moment it actually lives on a billboard or an album cover or wherever it is, all of that process is valid, every step in that is equally as important, it isn't just the moment you stand in front of the model of what it is, that's, you know, the different tempos of it, but it's a whole thing. And what we asked John to do, and what he was very open to do, was to basically cover the atelier for cameras.

[26:12] So, you know, people were wearing them on their heads, you know, they had one, the dog was wearing one. That was one of my favorite parts, the dog running around. I've never seen a fan designer as from a viewpoint of his dog, that we hadn't won everything. We had drones flying through the atelier, we had heat-seeking cameras, we had night shots, we had drones outside the atelier, trying to see through the windows. You know, we literally covered this whole process, the process of making a collection. You know, we recorded every part of it, and on top of that, John would get on Zoom calls with me, and, you know, he's a great orator, you know, when John's relaxed and speaks, he's a fantastic man to listen to. And so he would talk to me about, you know, where his references were formed, what he was excited about, what he was trying to do, you know, the decautique, all his new terms, you know, the way they stripped everything right down

[27:03] to the kind of almost like the sort of, you know, the structure behind the inside of a jacket. You've got a jacket like this, you know, it's padding here, there's linings here, you tear that all out, what's left, what do you start with? So you know, all that sort of thing, it's like talking to anybody who loves their subject, and is passionate about it. That's the way that, you know, sort of something like David Attenborough, you know, talks about, you know, the reproductive cycle of life. You're in, yeah. He's passionate about it, you know. Because he's so passionate about it. And John's like that, and that's what, in my opinion, what fashion needs and needed with somebody who would talk with that real passion, and that real love of what they're doing, the excitement about it. You know, he was bleaching all the clothes, getting rid of all the color out of the clothes. So if you take a black jacket,

[27:49] and you bleach all the color out, what color remains? You know, and this is fantastically delicate, a coup, and kind of champagne colors, and really teal, and it's beautiful, beautiful colors, which, you know, so all of that, all of this sort of process, which is fascinating, a mix of all his references, or what we sort of put in the swamp. And then from my side of it, what I wanted to do, and again, referencing earlier conversation, the early part of this conversation, I like seeing the world in ways that don't exist. So I set my cameras to do what's called a luminance invert, which is not the same as a negative. So when I'm looking through the camera, I'm seeing all the luminance values flipped. I'm seeing, effectively, what looks like a negative, but it's actually much more beautiful than negative.

[28:36] I'm seeing a different world. And, you know, any, you know, you will know as well as I know, you know, the juxtaposition of color is so important emotionally. You know, you've got color field paintings like a Rothko. That's just about the emotion of the juxtaposition of color. And we just invert the colors when you completely change that. You're into a different emotional world. If I have, you know, beautiful kind of blue skin, you know, that's a very different vision of me, you know, and everything else is equally changed. So you suddenly step into this world that didn't look like any world I've ever seen before. And all its values were changed. And I wasn't doing it, I wasn't filming it in normal, if you want, and then flipping it in post. I was flipping it whilst I was filming it. So what I saw through the viewfinder of my camera was everything. But that's that theatricality, that's that immediacy, the authenticity of like,

[29:26] you're witnessing the moment and capturing in real time. Yeah, so you changed the way the world looks and you live in that changed world. So that's, for me, was fascinating because you have to relearn all the values of what things mean and, you know, how you bring it all together. And on top of that, we had a kind of, we commissioned a writer, a good science fiction writer, a horror story writer, to write a narrative which is weaves in and out of the story to lesser or greater obviousness. So you have a kind of story, a narrative to follow, which is there. And that's sort of what John's gone on doing, taking that same narrative and developed it. So, you know, it was a very interesting way. I think people really picked up on that.

[30:18] You have this central person, John Galliano character, who is so good on camera when he's relaxed, and he's not, it doesn't feel like he's being formal. He's excited, you know, he's using. So it was, and then, you know, you have a kind of six or seven day shoot, which we're working day and night, you know. So literally, you have days of shooting which just don't finish, just roll on to the next day. It's incredibly immersive experience. So there's a lot of different parts of it which are very genuine. And the nice thing I find is it looks like it's a fantasy. It looks like it's some sort of version of kind of Walt Disney's Fantasia. It's actually in a whole bunch of different kind of color zones where that kind of should be seen from a dumbo. It's got that sort of value to it. But actually, it's actually imbued with a lot of real life, a lot of reality, a lot of real emotion.

[31:08] And you, of course, the people that I'm filming are John's muses who have worked with John all the way through the season. So you see them doing all the fittings, trying things on, walking up and down. You tell you're doing the catwalks, all this sort of thing for him just to see how the clothes will move. So these are people you come, the characters you get to know. So it became quite a sort of, you know, in a way quite a fully fledged film. And those are those moments, as you mentioned, that you know, you can't, the average human being will never witness. So you're taking those moments and you bring it into the context of the exhibition, of the fashion film. And I think that's probably the most important part for me or one of the most important parts. We've talked about a bunch of very crucial elements today, but the context and the decontextualization, that's something I talk about a lot, you know,

[31:50] in our work here at Decentral and Fashion Week. How do we take fashion and put it out of context? How do we merge the context of art and fashion? How do we merge the context of fashion and the metaverse? And I think that's super important. And maybe just to, you know, as we start to bring our conversation to a close, unfortunately, for me at least, I'd love to also consider the context of the metaverse as we are here right now. People are watching us via their avatars on a screen in the metaverse and witnessing this in a very tangible way virtually. I would love to talk about this context a little bit more. So as, you know, you continue to explore contexts with your clients, with your friends, with your collaborators, whether they be, you know, somebody's at Tellier or whether they be a fashion show or whether they be, you know, how you're exhibiting a film.

[32:37] I think it's quite interesting as we start considering this idea of a metaverse for many reasons, but for one reason that I wanna mention now, something that was brought up a few times in these various talks that I've recorded over the past few weeks is the idea of not considering the metaverse as a detraction from our lives because, you know, there's this huge conversation around how people are escaping into the metaverse and we're gonna lose our tangible or our reality in the metaverse. But people are talking about what value can the metaverse add to our lives? What can we do in the metaverse that we can't necessarily do in real life? And what experiences can we have virtually through these mediums, through VR, through an XR computer interface that otherwise would be impossible? And the reason I wanna bring this question up to you is I feel like you've been thinking about that question and you've been addressing that question

[33:24] for far beyond that, far before the idea of the metaverse actually existed. And almost, I would almost like to challenge, you know, thinking of this digital realm that, you know, you've been exploring for the past, you know, 22 years plus as the metaverse, you know, this digital realm, this heightened realm, this realm that we can create and, you know, put anything that we'd like into it. For me, that is a metaverse. And the last thing I wanna mention before I pass it over to you is, you know, here at Decentraland, we preach or promote an idea of an open metaverse. So what that means to us is not a metaverse, unfortunately, like what Facebook is trying to build where they have control over a space, but we look to promote a space that's open and accessible and interoperable. So if you go into the gallery space, which shoots SHOWstudio feature, again, my gallery, or any other space in Decentraland,

[34:10] you'll notice that if you click on an artwork or you click on a piece of fashion, you'll leave this world and move into another space, whether that be a website or another experience or NFT marketplace, whatever the case might be. But in other cases, you know, you can scan a QR code and go to an AR filter on your phone, or you could, you know, click another link and go to a VR experience that you have to load on your headset. So at least for us, that's really the world we wanna promote and that we're trying to build in this virtual space. And I'd love to hear some thoughts. Obviously, you know, we, maybe not obviously to some of the people listening, but we had, at least for me, a real pleasure of, you know, virtually kind of collaborating on this film festival in the metaverse, this fashion film festival and what that looks like, you know, in a virtual space and what pieces, what films do we wanna bring to this context?

[34:55] What does that mean to you? Do you think of, is there any gravitas to you bringing these films into the metaverse? Or do you have any thoughts on how this metaverse space that we're building, you know, can add to the narratives that you form for brands and people all over the world? It's in a way, I mean, no one has quite know what it's, how it's really gonna be, but we've got a pretty good idea of where it feels like it's gonna be. And to me, it's sort of like a very natural extension to everything I've been doing. It's just kind of, you know, I remember back, my first scanning in 1999, we did the kind of virtual catwalk and we got the girls that kind of clunked, the avatar to clunk up and down this catwalk. As elegantly as that would allow. And I remember hearing one of the guys I was working with, he said, oh, there's this program they're inventing in Japan where you can, you know, you can work

[35:46] with materiality of the clothes. I was thinking, ah, great, so she could start off and the clothes, the dress is made of silk and by the end of the catwalk, it's made of leather. You know, it will move in different ways. So I started getting really excited even then about the possibilities of what, you know, what you can do with this and what it can bring to fashion in general. You know, why are we stuck in one particular thing when it's possible to do so many other things? And, you know, the way I work, the images I create, you know, I'm sort of creating visions that don't exist in any case. So in a way, it's just an extension from that. You know, I'm already doing everything. You know, over there, there's the Gaga that we had for Monster Ball, which was a 25 foot Gaga. You know, if you're already sort of making those sorts of things, then just sort of allowing people to interact with them, allowing people to kind of use

[36:41] the tools that we use to change how they're gonna be. For me, it's just a sort of a very obvious continuation of everything that's been leading to this. You know, it feels like it doesn't feel like suddenly come up in the last year. It feels like it's been going on ever since I started looking at alternative ways of expression fashion. This is kind of, you know, the sort of where it's all been heading. You know, I love the idea that, you know, you can interact in a different space, a virtual space, and you can, you know, if you want to change your, change your appearance, or you can adopt your appearance, or you can, you know, your identity can change. I love all of that. That's to do with human creativity. We need to give people the tools to be able to do that. You know, if I'm going into a virtual space, I have to work out what I wanna look like, you know.

[37:30] At the moment, I'm just thinking, I'm fine as I am, which is an arrogance. It's just kind of, I'm not quite sure where I begin to change things. But, you know, I'm working on my own. We have a very high definition scan of me, and the same for a lot of people at church studio. And we have a very high definition scan of a lot of the well-known models. So, you know, we're starting to work in these worlds, which hopefully will be as beautiful as a Klimt, or as beautiful as a, you know, as a Degas, or anything. Why can't it be the most beautiful, sublime vision of oneself? And if you can develop that, and allow people to have those tools to create this incredible, why should, why can't we have the most beautiful space? And why isn't that amazing? You know, I read James Lovelock, James Lovelock's, an overseed, over the lockdown.

[38:23] And got really, really excited about, I don't know if you know the book, but, you know, James Lovelock is a hundred. He's still writing some of the most, you know, interesting engagements with AI and this sort of thing. You know, and I was thinking, you know, this is really taking us to a new level, you know. We have to sort of start to think of, we're not gonna be the most intelligent species on this planet. It's no good pretending that we are. We always will be that sort of limited arrogance. It's not good. You know, we have to really acknowledge that there is another species we are creating, and it's already almost there, that are capable of processing information, developing their evolution, you know, 10,000 times faster than ours. You know, they make us look like garden plants, you know, they've kind of, yeah. So we have to, it's really, really important that the artistic industry, I'm sorry, the artistic community

[39:14] engages this stuff in a positive way. And you have to be sort of thinking, you know, this is brilliant and I want to shape the future of the world, the future of, you know, intelligence in a way that is beneficial and which is humane or which is at least positive. Otherwise, the only people who will do it will be, you know, the military and big business. And I don't want a world that's shaped by, you know, people who want to kill or grieve. You know, so I think it's really important in every sense that the artistic community really engages in the future and really starts to deal with issues which are really important. You know, we're developing cyborgs and we're developing, you know, intelligence levels which are 10,000 times faster than our own. You know, one has to be aware of that and one has to be sort of willing to accept that as where we're going, evolutionary, you know.

[40:08] Evolution only happens towards a positive, only happens towards a beneficial, you know, things that evolve for the negative don't last. So we are on an evolutionary trip and we are accelerating that enormously at the moment. You know, there's every chance that we are completely alone in the universe, that there is no other life form. It's a possibility that we should look at that and we shouldn't be so arrogant as to feel that, you know, somebody else will come along, you know, et cetera, et cetera. We might, it might be that actually our duty is to keep intelligence alive. If, you know, there's a timing blip that we're in that before the sun expands and heats up and fries us everything on this planet, we have some serious thinking to do about, you know, does the universe go back to an empty, non-intelligent, you know, non-conscious, non, you know, does everything go?

[41:00] So there's some really big issues here, which are quite fundamental, you know, they're not common, but they're quite all encompassing. So it gets beyond fashion, beyond fashion, et cetera, et cetera. But the thinking's still there that we do have to deal with things, artificial intelligence, I think it's fascinating. No, I mean, AI is a perfect point to bring up, and also living in a world of AI and numbers, it's actually quite interesting that, you know, there isn't really much left to explore in our physical worlds, so that now, you know, the space to explore is the metaverse, but at the same time, I think what's really beautiful is that the metaverse is ours to create. So actually, in a space where the world is reliant on numbers, this virtual space is actually, in my opinion right now, reliant on artists and creatives to build the spaces around us. So it's quite crucial. It couldn't be more, it's exactly that,

[41:49] and that's why I also worry about Facebook or Metro or whatever, whatever you call it, because it's done for business. And SHOWstudio, although it's not, you know, in the same huge leagues as Facebook, but we started it for the love of the art. It was never started for business. We never said, how could we make a million bucks on the internet? It was always, you know, let's do something which really allows people to push the art, push, you know, push creativity. And that's still very much what it's about, you know, we're still very much in that mindset. And so I think it's incredibly important that capitalism and the money and all that sort of thing isn't the fuel for the future. You know, I think we have to, in my opinion, the world is not working particularly at the moment, and this is an opportunity to try and create something that will work. It's, you know, it's exciting and it's a challenge,

[42:39] but these new frontiers are there for us to explore and to rise to the challenge. It's quite exciting. Of creating something for the future. So, yeah, and I think it's fascinating. I just feel, you know, the more I get into this, the more I feel I've just started, which is a sort of weird feeling because you'd think after doing it for 20 odd years, you'd think, well, you know, you feel you've got, but no, it's like scratching as you see more and more and more and more. You know, the doors open to other rooms and other rooms and the vision gets bigger and bigger. I wasn't gonna bring this up, but one thing I bring up in some lectures that I do because I do a bunch of lectures on, you know, NFTs and some of these, you know, web three and some of these like really out there topics. But something that comes up more and more often is that, you know, this concept of hyper-modernity. You know, we've reached a place in time

[43:23] where technology's advancing at a rate faster than we can possibly comprehend. And the sooner that we kind of recognize that, you know, the sooner that we can, you know, just be open to this change in real time because it's, you know, once you're aware of it, you know, and I'm sure you are already aware of it, you know, there's nothing that we can really do about it. You know, we're gonna become aware of a technology or learn a technology and then next year, there's gonna be something twice as good that's entirely different. And I think that's a great thing and we just kind of have to embrace it. I absolutely think we have to really be pushing on it. You know, it's up to people like yourself, you know, it's up to the, you know, the artistic community to really, really engage with this and not to be sort of, you know, I get very upset when I hear so many sort of scare stories and kind of, you know, anti-tech stories

[44:05] and kind of, you know, we're being bombarded by information. We can't concentrate. That's not true. I'm not being any more bombarded by a person. I was in the 1960s. You know, I'm quite capable of doing it. You know, it's just a different way of living. I've always loved the idea of change. That's my whole life. I've been excited by the idea of the new possibility. And so this for me is, you know, it's just feeling like, you know, there are so many new possibilities out there. And sometimes at SHOWstudio, I'll walk, you know, around the studio and I'll see on people's screen and everybody working here has got something amazing that I've never seen before on the screen. I'm like, fascinated by it. You know, we're trying to do something where we open the screens at SHOWstudio so people can just come and, you know, click on and see what I'm doing on my computer.

[44:53] Why not? You know, I'm totally sort of excited by that. And, you know, the audience is so much a part, or what you call the audience, it's community. You know, so much a part of what we do and so much a part of what we want to do. You couldn't have touched on a better point because I actually wanted to end with one notion which I feel like is tying us all in from the first thing that we talked about. So when you were talking about how you started SHOWstudio, I think one of the first things that you mentioned, and it's about this community, but it's accessibility. You know, it's bringing people into a space that otherwise they would never be privy to. You know, your story about Naomi Campbell, I think is perfect, you know, this moment where five people were witnessing this. And I think to the same extent, when we create art, especially digital art, if we don't show it to people, that obviously exists in a total vacuum.

[45:34] You know, you could create the next masterpiece, as you were saying, somebody probably has, you know, created the next masterpiece, but potentially nobody has seen it because it's sitting in a blender file or a Cinema 4D file on their computer and has never seen the light of day. So I think accessibility is a really interesting topic, especially when we're, you know, bringing it back into the context of fashion. Because obviously, you know, this is a fashion week. You know, we're calling it Metaverse Fashion Week and it's happening right in between, you know, Paris Fashion Week just happened. A lot of the fashion weeks are about to happen. And I think the main thing that sets this apart, it's funny because obviously the main thing that sets this apart is the fact that it's in the Metaverse. But for me, what really sets it apart is that brands are making their shows and their fashion week experiences accessible to anybody.

[46:15] The fact that anybody can go to a runway show from a brand like Dolce & Gabbana has never been, has never happened before. You know, there's never been a way that ever, maybe you could stream it on Instagram, but you couldn't go, you know, even virtually. You couldn't go and I love to use the word tangible because you can't say physical because we're in the Metaverse, but you can tangibly experience, you know, one of these moments, one of these like liminal moments in time that just happens for those 15 minutes and then is gone, but you can experience it in real time. Yeah, you have to be part of it. It's not just a passive thing, you have to be part of it. And that's why I've always been fascinated by is how to enable the community, how to enable the audience to not just be a passive. I mean, yes, we open the doors up and as I say, you know, people can see through cameras what we're doing and they can come and hopefully see,

[46:57] you know, what I'm working on my laptop. So all that accessibility is fine, but I actually might be interested by hearing what they think or getting them to change the work for them to do the work. So you're like your live streams, you were saying like they're able to comment and be a part of it. I feel like every year we're kind of getting closer and closer to this more tangible experience. First it's photos, then it's videos, then it's a live stream. Now we can actually go with our avatars and be there while the show is taking place. So I think that's quite exciting. And yeah. Yeah, I think it's happening and you will see, I'll show you later this year, you know, there will be a chance for people to come and be part of my image creation. So, you know, it is just a continuation of that desire to kind of include people. It's on a very human level. You know, if you came to see me today at SHOWstudio,

[47:45] I would give you a cup of tea and a slice of cake. I don't walk you around, I'd show you and I'd talk to you. We do things and you'd see all the things we're working on and how 3M is fantastic when you put water on it. And all the different things we're looking at at the moment. And that's just what I want. I just want people to be in here and talking and working and moving things around. You know, and that's the sort of space I like to live in. That's the sort of space I'd like to be part of. You know, where you feel you're actually not just an audience and a performer, but actually, you're part of that performance. You're creating things with me or creating things with people we're working with. So that's kind of where we're going with it, you know? So we're working with a set of digital-only designers. I should not call all this, but digital designers, you know, for a live shoot that's coming up.

[48:29] And I can't say too much about it yet, but you know, it's fascinating. So we're working with people who I've been seeing for the last two or three years now appearing more and more frequently, you know, and, you know, creating things which just, you know, could only exist in this world. So, you know, to be able to create imagery of that sort of thing, you know, it'll all reveal itself on SHOWstudio in the next, in the, in the, in the fullness of this, of time, you know, coming very, very shortly. I'm after this, you know, we're going to be our first NFT drop, and that allows you into more parts of SHOWstudio. Well, that's all to come. That's all to come. Very exciting. Everybody stay tuned to SHOWstudio. Sounds like it's about to be WED 3 enabled. So look out, that sounds amazing. And I can't wait to witness it firsthand. Nick, I know that we've come to the end of our time, but I can't tell you what a pleasure it's been

[49:20] to sit down and chat with you for a little bit. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this. And if anybody is, for whatever reason, unfamiliar, please do go over to SHOWstudio.com and all of their social media. Find Nick and all the beautiful work that he's doing. And of course, if you'd like, right here during fashion week, you can head over to the events page, click on the Cash Labs gallery, head over to the rooftop, and you can see five to six films a day, every day rolling 24 hours a day, curated by Nick Knight and the incredible people at SHOWstudio. So thank you so much for doing that. And thank you so much for taking the time for this chat. It's really a pleasure. My pleasure. It's really nice to speak to you. Likewise, likewise. Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much everybody for listening. I hope you've enjoyed day one of Decentraland Fashion Week. Please make sure to explore,

[50:04] and we'll see you back here on the main stage tomorrow morning. Thanks so much for tuning in. Take care. Thank you.